It's surprising that they don't talk about how Minimum wage increase take the largest toll on the middle class. This is because their wages don't increase in accordance to the MWI and yet the cost of goods do.

"Murray, whose two convictions in the killing of Jayla Belton were overturned in 1999 after she spent three years in juvenile prison, had sought $30 million for alleged civil rights violations by former Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle and several assistant prosecutors as well as police detectives, state Child Protective Services workers and others.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks dismissed the lawsuit last year. The suit, filed in 2002, never went to trial. "

It annoys me that this trial has already cost us taxpayers this much. LaCresha get over yourself this is not your winning lottery ticket. YOU KILLED A CHILD, you're not a due anything and are lucky you're still not in jail.

Because I'm to busy to type up my own ideas on this I've copied Mankiw's thoughts here.

"A common argument, often made by ostensibly sophisticated commentators, is that the United States needs to reform its health care system to maintain its international competitiveness. Regardless of your views of health care reform, this particular argument is, to put it bluntly, nonsense. Long ago, Paul Krugman wrote a nice piece demolishing the whole concept of international competitiveness as a motive for national economic policy. More recently, the Congressional Budget Office has done a nice job explaining why the idea of international competitiveness as a reason for health care reform is fallacious. The passage below, from page 167 of the CBO analysis, is written in the CBO's traditional understated way, but the point is clear:

International Competitiveness

Some observers have asserted that domestic producers that provide health insurance to their workers face higher costs for compensation than competitors based in countries where insurance is not employment based and that fundamental changes to the health insurance system could reduce or eliminate that disadvantage. However, such a cost reduction is unlikely to occur, except in the short run.

The equilibrium level of overall compensation in the economy is determined by the supply of and the demand for labor. Fringe benefits (such as health insurance) are just part of that compensation. Consequently, the costs of fringe benefits are borne by workers largely in the form of lower cash wages than they would receive if no such benefits were provided by their employer.

Replacing employment-based health care with a government-run system could reduce employers’ payments for their workers’ insurance, but the amount that they would have to pay in overall compensation would remain essentially unchanged. Even though changes to the health care system could have various effects on the supply of labor, the underlying amount of labor supplied at any given level of compensation would hardly beaffected by a change in the health care system. As a result, cash wages and other forms of compensation would have to rise by roughly the amount of the reduction in health benefits for firms to be able to attract the same number and types of workers.

Compensation could take some time to adjust to its market-clearing level (the point at which supply and demand are equal). During that time, firms that formerly provided health benefits—especially firms that employ workers under multiyear contracts—could experience substantial reductions in labor costs, which would boost their profits temporarily. But those firms would experience no permanent change in their competitive status.

Be ready: This fallacy may well be rearing its ugly, and illogical, head in the days to come."

So pre-train we ran at 75% income and has $200million in the bank. Post train we're running in deficit and have just over $10million in the bank and now need to borrow 10million more? Oh yeah and we still haven't paid off the trains either we still owe $29million on them. That and the train hasn't even carried non-press passengers yet. Again sure glad we wast....spent that money.

Now this was a train system built upon existing tracks. It was sold to Austin for about 60million + 30million of federal funds. It's current cost is above 300 million as long as you look past the shell game of hiding costs by making the Train stations as bus stations and charging them against the bus budget. You know even though they're TRAIN stations. To make this even better the people on the Leander line are getting worse service. The current express bus makes 4 stops in downtown and pretty much drops you off within walking distance of most places you'd want to go. The Train well it has one that's near the convention center. The Convention Center which isn't really near any major employment, and have fun walking when it gets to 112 downtown.

Then you get to the yearly cost $10million. Yeah I know Cap Metro for some reason loves the number, but that's what they're projecting. Though I've heard numbers going from 9 to 12 so your milage may vary. So that's 10K per rider per year in just maintenance costs(no capital cost in there). That's about 6K less than someone who makes minimum wage with a full time job.

So think about this when you think about Obama's cracked out dream for a nationwide rail system. Basically we can't afford it, nor do we really need it.

"Let's see. From 2010 to 2019, Obama projects annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion; that's atop the $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009. By 2019, the ratio of publicly held federal debt to gross domestic product (GDP, or the economy) would reach 70 percent, up from 41 percent in 2008. That would be the highest since 1950 (80 percent). The Congressional Budget Office, using less optimistic economic forecasts, raises these estimates. The 2010-19 deficits would total $9.3 trillion; the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2019 would be 82 percent."

How does anyone think this is good? Oh yeah :

"One reason Obama is so popular is that he has promised almost everyone lower taxes and higher spending. Beyond the undeserving who make more than $250,000, 95 percent of "working families" receive a tax cut. Obama would double federal spending for basic research in "key agencies." He wants to build high-speed-rail networks that would require continuous subsidy. Obama can do all this and more by borrowing."

But what happens when people stop lending us money? I mean at some point our credit has to run out and China has already considered turning off their tap.

Then there's this point"The wonder is that these issues have been so ignored. Imagine hypothetically that a President McCain had submitted a budget plan identical to Obama's. There would almost certainly have been a loud outcry: "McCain's Mortgaging Our Future." Obama should be held to no less exacting a standard."

People love to think that I and others like me would be defending McCain, but this blog would serve as proof that I wouldn't be. Just as many other blogs show that the vast majority of Liberals are being Hypocritical because they whined about Bush's deficit spending, but are silent or giddy about Obama's. What's the difference? Because it's their guy taking their lunch money vs the guy from the other city?

"When the Obama stimulus plan was proposed, the president's economic team put out a report in January 2009 that purported to show what would happen with and without the fiscal stimulus. The chart above is from page four that report, together with the actual results over the past couple months. As you can see, the actual outcome is significantly worse than the projection with the stimulus plan and is, in fact, roughly on track with what was projected without the stimulus."

I really wish there wasn't so much bad news to report. Oh yeah especially that isn't being reported on in the regular media.

Why is this not Headline news? It annoys me how much the news media is pandering to Obama.

"Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding that has caused a lot of consternation among our members,” said Richard J. Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association. “I’ve spent the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it.”

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said “the president misspoke” on Monday and again on Wednesday when he described the industry’s commitment in similar terms. After providing that account, Ms. DeParle called back about an hour later on Thursday and said: “I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.”"

Yep the pres misspoke, oh wait no I did. Come on now.

Also in the article

"House Democrats on Thursday circulated the outline of a bill that would require all Americans to carry health insurance and would subsidize premiums for many people with incomes up to four times the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four).

Under the proposal, employers would have to offer coverage to employees or help finance it by paying a percentage of their payroll. The Democrats are proposing creation of a “public health insurance plan,” which would compete with private insurers.

The public plan would probably be run by the Health and Human Services Department, according to the outline."

Why should I subsidize a family of 4 making $88K? If they couldn't afford to have that many kids then they should have had them. It's called personal responsibility. You know something Obama preached about in 2004.

"Two years later, Jimmy Carter was elected president and I was convinced Republicans would be in the wilderness the rest of my political life. After the first 100 days, President Carter's approval rating was 69 percent -- higher than President Obama's.

And four years after that I was working in the White House as an assistant to President Ronald Reagan -- who defeated Carter by a landslide and won a Senate majority and a philosophical majority in the House. For 20 of the next 28 years, a Republican was in the White House."